Speech #880010866

Mr. Speaker. I would like to make a brief statement in favor of legislation to amend and improve the operation of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 which I am today introducing in the House. At the risk of uttering a very bad pun. I would say that this bill is designed to put a little more heart into the immigration law. I think this law can use it. The purpose of the bill is limited to changing the immigration quota provisions of the McCarranWalter Act. It proposes a substitute quota system for the present system based on national origins. Mr. Speaker. the national origins quota system has been criticized for its features of racial discrimination for many years. These criticisms. in my opinion. have had substance and I feel that if a workable substitute can be foundone that will fulfill our own national goals without giving offense to other countries of the worldthen such a substitute should be adopted. The national origins quota system is based upon a belief that the people of one nationality or race are superior to those of another. Most Americans would agree. I am sure. that such a belief. however popular it once might have been. has no place in the laws of our Nation today. It is no secret that when the first permanent immigration quota law was adopted in 1924 it was purposely designed to curtail the "new immigration" from southern and eastern Europe while not interfering with the "old immigration" from northern and western Europe. This is apparent when one merely examines what the quotas are. Great Britain. for example. has an annual quota of over 65.000more than onethird of the total quotas of all the countries of the world. most of which goes unused every year. Germany and Ireland also have liberal quotas. reflecting the many early settlers in the American colonies and in the United States from those countries. At the same time. a country like Greece whose immigration quota is oversubscribed by some 105.000 visa applications. has a quota of 308. Thus we have a situation in which the immigration quotas allotted to certain countries are larger than they can use. while other countries are given quotas which are paltry in relation to their needs. And all of this is determined by the accidents of historywhich countries had contributed the most stock to the U.S. population as it existed in the year 1920. Surely. some more equitable means of allocating our immigration quotas can be found than this. I think that my bill offers a reasonable alternative to the present system and is certainly to be preferred to it. My bill provides a new means of allocating the immigration quotas based in part on comparative populations of foreign countries and in part upon the proportion of immigration into the United States from the various countries during recent years. Under the bill the total worldwide immigration quota would be set at 250.000 immigrants a year. Under the present law it is around 157.000 and varies from time to time with changes in the number of individual quota areas that are recognized. Of the 250.000 total. 50.000 would be set aside for use by refugees and escapees without regard to the quota areas from which they come. In the light of recent experience I would not expect to see anything close to the full amount of these refugee visas utilized very often. The remaining 200.000 visas would be allocated under a twopart formula. Eighty thousand of these would be apportioned in accordance with the proportionate populations of the countries of the world. no one country to receive more than 3.000 visas under this provision. The other 120.000 quota visas would be allocated in accordance with the proportionate immigration fcom the various countries of the world during the past 15 years. Under the revised allocation. Italys quota would be increased from the present 5.666 to 15.648.